Nina Johnson is proud to present Neon Sun, a solo exhibition by Miami-based artist and designer Emmett Moore. Featuring new functional outdoor works—including seating, lighting, and vessels—arranged as though in a home garden, the exhibition responds to a distinctly local vernacular while reflecting on the interplay between the built and natural environments. For Moore, the show represents a culmination of many years of studio practice, bringing together long-standing techniques such as faux coral rock with new explorations like aluminum casting.
Drawing on his background in design and architecture, Moore works at the intersection of utility and sculpture, transforming industrial remnants and discarded materials into refined forms. Aluminum seating elements—chairs, benches, and tables—are composed of I-beams, grating, and cast impressions of tree trunks and mussel shells, then painted in vivid neon pink, a color Moore describes as “pure and primal—the color of flesh, flowers, and flamingos,” embodying a duality that is at once sensual and violent, beautiful and grotesque. Seductive and hyperreal, neon pink evokes the cheap glow of open signs and strip clubs while also appearing in natural phenomena and the very gases that make up our world. This negotiation between raw infrastructure and ecological fragility mirrors Miami itself: a city of constant construction layered atop a deep history of habitation and biodiversity.
Above the seating, lamps carved from Moore’s signature process of using scrap EPS foam resemble massive coral rock formations yet float improbably from the trees. These works reference Miami’s oolitic limestone bedrock—the geological foundation that made development possible—while underscoring cycles of reuse, illusion, and transformation. A 3D-printed bowl composed of interwoven mussel shells and disposable lighters extends this thread, drawing parallels between ancient Native shell mounds at the mouth of the Miami River and contemporary monuments of waste.
“I designed and built my own house in Miami and I make my own furniture. All my concepts for work are tested in my home,” Moore explains. That personal ethos of functionality grounds the exhibition: even as the works embody histories of consumption, cycles of accumulation, and tensions between artifice and authenticity, they remain usable as seating, tables, or lighting—anchoring sculpture in the everyday. Moore’s practice, rooted in Miami, merges design and fine art to address themes of material transformation, nature and ecology, and the unfinished infrastructures of the urban landscape. His works embody a careful balance of humor, rigor, and experimentation, transforming waste into form and functional objects into cultural vessels.
Neon Sun will be on view in the Sculpture Garden at Nina Johnson through February 14, 2026. Select works from this body of work will also be featured in the gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, serving as both sculptural artworks and the seating and tables for the presentation.
